Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Little to report. I’m nibbling away at the edges of the Amedro shawl. I’ve eliminated 80 stitches so far, but it’s still hard to believe that, if I go on decreasing at this rate, the shawl won’t be vaster than empires before I get to the end.

All goes well. That centre pattern repeats over only six stitches, and Sharon has made a correspondingly small chart for it. Now that I’m on top of the problem, I realise that a slightly larger chart, showing how the pattern offsets every four rows, would make it a lot easier to grasp.

Knit Camp

I’ve been brooding about Knit Camp. Deb Robson, in the blog post I linked to yesterday, provides a link to a blog post by the organizer herself. It’s a pretty remarkable document, I think.

I went over to Ravelry this morning to see what’s going on – the computer is being very slow to load pages; I’ll miss my power walk today. I found that a fund has been established to pay the tutors. It is being run by chartered accountants Clifford Towers who are making no charge. This is, I hope, the PayPal link. I made a donation.

Fund-raising is also being done by de-stashing. I might have a go at that, but a simple donation is easier.

Aren’t knitters wonderful?

Other

Today’s event is the diabetes appointment. At the moment, I’m halfway or a bit more down the foot of Matt’s first sock. I have set myself to finish it, and to do the onerous 50 rounds of ribbing for the second, by the time we get back from Loch Fyne on Monday.

2 comments:

It occurs to me that the organiser might have done better to have e-mailed - or better, to have called - each and every one of the instructors personally than to have attempted to excuse herself in an impersonal blog post. I don't think anyone fails to appreciate that it was a huge undertaking, but it seems to me that much of the complaint comes from how the organisers handled themselves given the situation. In the end, I'm glad I didn't have the means of late to have attempted to register.

I also think that it would be very wise if someone up at the top end - perhaps someone who had to deal with the visa issue at the bureaucratic level - could raise the issue with the relevant authorities. Some of it was obviously a lack of knowledge on the part of the organisers but it is also clear that the red tape involved is stifling potentially valuable educational events! We have the same problem here in Australia.